Australian GP Practice Results

2 KTM lead in less than a second top 17

The sixteenth round of the MotoGP World Championship got underway on Friday at the spectacular Phillip Island circuit in Australia. The day, which was sunny and featured pleasant temperatures, concluded with Brad Binder at the top of the timesheets, with a 1:27.943 lap, ahead of Jack Miller and Maverick Viñales.

The riders who also qualified directly for Q2 were Jorge Martín, Pol Espararó, Marco Bezzechi, Fabio Di Giannantonio, Enea Bastianini, Aleix Espargaró and Johann Zarco.

Due to inclement weather forecast for Sunday the 22nd of October, the schedule for the MotoGP race has been updated: The MotoGP Grand Prix race will now take place on Saturday the 21st of October at 15:10 local time (GMT +11) and the Sprint Race is now scheduled to begin at 14:00 on Sunday the 22nd of October, weather permitting.

Difficult day for Marc Márquez and Joan Mir

The Repsol Honda Team riders  began their adaptation to the demanding Australian track with some difficulties. In the first free practice session, Marc Márquez set the twelfth fastest time, despite a small crash. In the second session, the Repsol Honda Team rider crashed again, and although he was among the Top 10 with just a few minutes remaining, he dropped to a final sixteenth position. Joan Mir was 20th in FP1, improving in the second session to place 18th. Both riders will have one last free practice session on Saturday, before competing in Q1. They will try to gain access to Q2 ahead of the main race of the weekend at 15.10 local time (GMT +11).

Australian GP Practice results

Statements

Marc Márquez

“I had two moments today in Turn 10, especially the second one I was almost able to save it like 2019 and 2022! The weekend is going about as we expected, I need to rebuild my confidence and the moments in Turn 10 didn’t help. Tomorrow we will try and improve my riding to get the most out of the bike. Having the main race tomorrow will not change much for us with our situation, but all the riders and the championship were in agreement it was the best decision.”

Joan Mir

“Today was a very hard day, when a weekend starts in a tricky way like this you have a lot of work to do. Unfortunately, our bike is not as strong here as it was in India, Motegi or Mandalika so there is more work to do for sure. You have to change the bike a lot for a track like this and we spent a lot of time doing this today. But I am not as comfortable as I want to be so we are a bit restricted here. Traction is the biggest area we need to work on. I think it’s a good decision to have the race tomorrow, already the weather has started to change.”